Garment-supporter.



. C. J. WHITE. GARMBNT SUPPORTI-IR. APPLICATION FILED APR. 19. 1909.

Patented Apr. 16, 1912.

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New Britain, in the county of Hartford.

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CHARLES J. WHITE, 0F NEW BRITAIN, CONNECTICUT.

GARIVIENT-SUPPORTER.

Specification of Letters Patent.

Patented Apr. 16, 1912.

To all whom t may concern.'

Be 1t known that I, CHARLES J. 1Wi-Irrli, a citizen of the United States, residing at and State of Connecticut, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Garment- Supporters; and I do hereby declare the following, when taken in connection with the accompanying drawings and the letters of reference marked thereon, to be a full, clear, and eXact description of thesame, and which said drawings constitute part of this specification, and represent, in

Figure 1 a view in elevation of one form which a garment-supporter embodying my invention may assume. Fig. 2 an enlarged view thereof in vertical section on the line 0.-?) of Fig. 1. Fig. 3 a view in elevation of one of t-he modified forms which my invention may assume. Fig. 4, an enlarged view in vertical section on the line c-el of Fig. 3. Fig. 5 a broken view in front elevation of still another modified form which my improvement may assume. Fig. 6 an enlarged view in vertical Sectio-n on the line e-f of Fig. 5. Fig. 7 a broken view in front elevation of still another modified form which my invention may assume. Fig. S an enlarged view in vertical section on the line g'h of Fig. 7.

My inventionrelates to an improvement in garment-supporters, the object being to provide simple and effective means for removing substantially all of the strain from the elast-ic suspension webbing used in such supporters at the point of the attachment of such webbing to a garment. y

With these ends in view my inventionv consists in certain details of construction and combination of parts as will be hereinafter described and pointed out in the claims.

Before proceeding to a description of my improvement, I may say that in stitching elastic webbing the needle pierces some of the strands of rubber and weakens them so that in use they break apart and, as it were, crawl in the webbing, whereby the same is impaired in efficiency and disfigured in appearance.

I have spoken of my improvement as a garment-supporter, though I would have it understood that it is applicable to hose supporters, and in fact to personal wear generally where a metal clasp is attached to the lower end of a piece of elastic webbing stitched at its upper end to a corset or beltor any other garmentor piece of personal wear, or' folded upc-n itself and attached to a pin or other supporting means. I therefore employ the word garment-supporter in a generic sense and'intend by it to cover hose-supporters and all kindred articles.

In carrying outl my invention as shown in Figs. 1 and 2, I stitch the upper end of the elastic suspension webbing 2 between the lower edges of the inner and outer thicknesses 3 and i of a garment, such as a corset or belt, or other piece of personal wear. The stitches 5 pass through the webbing 2 and the thicknesses 3 and l close to the lower edges thereof as clearly shown in Fig. 1. At its lower end the webbing 2 is provided with a garment-supporter clasp 6 which may be of any approved construction. As the clasp proper has nothing to do with my present invention, I will not describe it in detail. Now to remove the downward strain imposed upon the webbing 2 by the clasp 6 from the stitches 5, I employ a stay-piece in the form of a sheet-metal slide having an upper cross-bar 7, a middle cross-bar 8, and a lower cross-bar 9, the latter being provided upon its upper edge with teeth 10 having a slight: rearward pitch. Between the said cross-bars of the slide are threading-openings 11 and 12 for the passage of the webbing 2 which passes from rear to front through the opening 12 and then upward in front of the middle cross-bar 8 and from front to rear through the opening l 11, and then up back of the upper cross-bar 7 to the stitches 5. By threading the suspension-webbing 2 through the slide as described, the downward draft upon the webbing falls upon the teeth 10 of the lower cross-bar 9 at which point the webbing is sharply deflected. In order not to have the draft upon the slide transmitted to the stitches-5 through that portion of the webbing 2 above the slide, I employ a short length of preferably non-elastic webbing 13 the lower end of which is looped over the cross-bar 8 and secured by stitches 14, the upper end of the webbing 18 being laid upon the back of the upper end of the webbing 2 and stitched in between the thicknesses 3 and 4: by the stitches 5. The staypiece is therefore supported independently of the elastic webbing 2 by the non-elastic webbing 13 which is entirely concealed behind it. As the webbing 13 will not give, the draft upon the webbing 2 is transmitted from the stay-piece to the non-elastic webbing 13, little or no strain being thrown upon that portion of the elastic webbing 2 above the lower cross-bar 9 of the slide.

In the modified construction shown by Figs. 3 and 4, the elastic suspension-webbing 15 which is provided at its lower end with a garment-supporter clasp 16, has its upper end stitched in place by stitches 17 between the inner and outer thicknesses 18 and 19 of some piece of personal wear, such as a corset. In order to remove the downward draft imposed upon the elastic webbing 15 from the stitches 17, I pass the upper end of the webbing 15 through a stay-piece in the form of a small buckle consisting of a plate-like frame 2O having forwardly projecting perforated ears 21 for the reception of trunnions 22 located at the opposite ends of a lever having a finger-piece 23 and a gripping edge 24 which latter operates to crowd the webbing against the plate 2O which is formed with a longitudinal slot 25 receiving a loop 26 at the lower end of a short length of non-elastic webbing 27 the upper end of which is stitched between the thicknesses 18 and 19 by the same stitches 17 employed to stitch the upper end of the webbing 15 thereto. Under this construction the draft im; posed upon the webbing 15 will be focused at the point where the edge 24 of the bucklelever jams the webbing against the plate 2O forming the buckle-frame from which the strain will be transmitted through the nonelastic webbing 27 to the garment, whereby substantially all strain will be removed from the upper end of the webbing 15 at the point where the same is stitched by the stitches 17.

In the construction shown by Figs. 5 and 6, the upper end of the elastic webbing 28 is secured by stitches 29 between the inner and outer thicknesses 30 and 31 of the garment, the train being removed from the stitches 29 so far as the elast-ic webbing 28 is concerned, by the employment of a sheet metal staypiece in the form of a slide buckle which is suspended by a short length of non-elastic webbing 32 the upper end of which is secured in place by the stitches 29 aforesaid, and the lower end of which is inserted int-o Y a U-shaped clip 33 formed by bending a por- 55 tion of the frame 34 of the slide buckle upon itself. In the buckle-frame 34 I mount a wire loop 35 the lower bar of which projects below it and forms a threading opening 36 through which the webbing 28 is passed from rear to front, the webbing being engaged in passing through the opening 36 with teeth 37 formed upon the lower edge of the frame 34 which is provided with lingers 4 38 which clasp the ends of the loop 35 for securing the same in place. In this construction the draft upon the webbing 28 is thrown upon the slide buckle the transmitted draft of which is thrown upon the nonelastic webbing 32.

In the construction shown by Figs. 7 and 8, the elastic webbing 39 is passed through a wire loop 40 suspended from the lower bar of a horizontally arranged safety pin 41, the end ofthe webbing thus passed through the loop 40 having its eXtreme end turned inward and secured by stitches 42 to the upper end of a short length of non-elastic fabric 43 the lower end of which isformed with a loop 44 embracing the middle bar 45 of a stay-piece in the form of a slide, the lower bar 46 of which takes the downward strain upon the elastic webbing 39 from the stitches 42, the said strain being transmitted from the slide through the non-elastic webbing 43 to the loop 40 and hence to the safety pin 41. In this construction the upper ends of the elastic and non-elastic webbing are secured together, but instead of being applied directly to a garment of any description are connected with fastening means in the form of a safety-pin which in turn is attached to a garment. The fastening means might, of course, take some other form than a safetypin, the only requirement being that it shall be adapted to have the elastic and non-elastirwebbing attached to it, and that it shall itself be adapted to be applied to some article of personal wear.

I have spoken, throughout the foregoing description, of non-elastic webbing in describing the short piece of eXible non-elastic material placed at the back of the eX- treme upper end of the elastic webbing for the purpose of taking the strain from the transverse line of stitches by means of which the upper end of the elastic webbing is secured in place to a corset or belt or other piece of personal wear, whatever that may be. This piece or strip of non-elastic material may be webbing as described, or it may be woven fabric or anything else which will be pliable and substantially non-yielding or non-eXtensible. As its function is to guard and protect the stitches passing through the upper end of the elastic webbing I shall, in the claims, refer to it as the flexible guardstrip or piece.

I claim 1. As a new article of manufacture, a length of elastic webbing secured at one end to a support, a relatively short non-elastic coperating element connected to said webbing near said end by means which do not cut the threads of the elastic and attached to the same support to limit the stretch of that part of the elastic webbing between said support and said connection, the balance of said webbing being unaffected by said relatively non-elastic coperating element.

2. In a garment supporter, a strip of elaswebbing at a point remote from said non- 10 tic webbing, a relatively short non-elastic coelastic element. operating element connected to said webbing In testimony whereof, I have signed this near one end thereof by `means Which do not speccation in the presence of two sub- 5 cut the threads of the elastic, in combinascribing Witnesses.

tion with a holding member directly con- CHARLES J. WHITE. nected by sewing to said webbing and non- Vitnesses:

elastic element, and/another holding element FREDERIC C. EARLE,

connected to another part of said length of CLARA L. VVEED.

Copies of this patent may be obtained for ve cents each, by addressing the Commissioner of Patents, Washington, D. C. 

